Elon Musk

I cannot even imagine the life of someone who stans a billionaire that hard without being paid or in a romantic relationship

I think a lot of it comes from the immediately Great Recession crash era, where you had a combination of social and political-economic factors colliding:

-tech interests coming into to start gobbling up all the capital spending that real estate couldn’t reliably generate profits from.
- tech guys becoming savior-gurus to the level beyond the hype that guys like Bill Gates had in the 90s
-the Obama Admin openly embracing and incorporating tech guys has the cool smart saavy technocratic leaders who will lead civilization into the next era because mass politics sure as shit wasn’t going to be allowed to do that
-Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark being a bit hit and a useful fantasy of what a tech guy is and how this superhero was going to save us, and guys like Elon, Jobs, or Zuck paying a lot to promote that kind of branding for themselves
-the western(or at least American) conflation of tech-progress with social progress, since that’s how a lot the second half of the 20th Century/Cold War was both marketed and perceived

So yeah, you have a certain kind of person who swallowed every bit of the STEM hype of the last 15 years and existing in a culture where the personal advancement of tech billionaires is conceived as Progress(and/or America) Marching Forward. I don’t think it’s surprising that this kind of parasocial relationship would form. Our culture is great at generating those

Relatedly, because every other institution and metric of modern life(or at least the perception of it) is getting worse, I think plenty of folks put all their hopes into one of those tech moguls innovating/disrupting/conjuring the genius solution to everything. Electoral politics has been deliberately drained of any ability to address the problem, so without those tech superhero figures to believe in, there’s be nothing but despair.

death/murder/suicide/dissolution of the labour movement seems to be lurking in the background here

but it still seems to keep him up at night which is something to hold on to

everyone love the rocketman who will save us from the environment, tho tbf a many of his online boosters are prob paid or at least financially aligned in some way

I hope so

vaguely recall someone trying to untangle it all at some point, pr firms def offer the service of people liking you online, and then the tesla investor community is extremely active too

think tesla gives perks/access to big accounts too

does that explain the absurdly credulous media coverage until a minute ago or is that its own problem

i mean it cant hurt but i think that was mostly just good tradidtional pr work, pitching the business press with a story about how a business man is going to save the world by doing business is a winner every time, musk really shouldve stuck to that instead of doing whatever it is hes doing now

death/murder/suicide/dissolution of the labour movement seems to be lurking in the background here

True, tho I think the Musk fanboy types aren’t exactly the types who would have been at those kind of jobs

Also, as somebody expressed it better than me, Musk has switched his target audience up of the years, going from aiming at NPR liberals to more libertarian tech types to now transphobic Maga chuds

I guess the thing with mega billionaires is that they really are a different form of life and I don't think any of us can really comprehend what that mindset is like. You wanna say "oooooh the money wouldn't change me" so you'd just be a more extravagant version of who you are now. You'd still want the same sort of people to like you. You wanna be the most popular kid at school AND own the school at the same time. And if you're a total asshole then Elon Musk IS that guy. So maybe they just identify with him and think "well he must be a good person then"

the thing with mega billionaires is that they really are a different form of life and I don't think any of us can really comprehend what that mindset is like.

Somewhere north of $10 million money stops being money and becomes power. A mega billionaire has enough power to warp the direction of entire societies. It's got to be a huge mindfuck.

yeah someone pointed it out on Twitter but spending your whole life getting to point at anything you want and then receiving that thing probably does really stunt your emotional growth, to say nothing of asking for and receiving full credit for extremely intricately engineered stuff you had nothing to do with outside of "let's add a fart button, ha ha"

Also, as somebody expressed it better than me, Musk has switched his target audience up of the years, going from aiming at NPR liberals to more libertarian tech types to now transphobic Maga chuds

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish)

That last step may be death for Tesla. They still want their giant RAM/Ford/Chevy rides.

Tho tbf, I never thought that demographic would ever link with Russia.

Musk can win them over by engraving “I identify as an F-250 Dually” in the bumper.

xxpost There are something like 700 billionaires in the US alone, and most of us can only name a couple. those few must represent the most insatiable egoists.

Sadly, I suspect the only thing that will slow down climate change is some self-aggrandising billionaire firing tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere from some bought country; this will then lead to some other disaster.

did a lot of non-rich people hero worship scumbag industrialists to an embarrassing degree back in the 1800s and 1900s? can the success of musk and his ilk mostly be attributed to well-funded PR via contemporary mass/social media (in the context of broader trends in social conditions, ideology, technology)? or does it reflect something more basic about human psychology (under capitalism? or in general?)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasant_mentality

That doesn’t actually get at what we’re talking about, tho, particularly as the prime example given in that wiki is actually rather lovely and Romantic. It also doesn’t answer the question, really.

From my knowledge of history, the phenomenon of people “stanning” or engaging in gross hero worship of extremely rich people only began in the 20th c and the rise of a modern celebrity culture. As far as inventors and industrialists getting this sort of acclaim and weirdo fealty, Edison and Ford are obvious precursors. That said, eventually, certain people became celebrities because they were rich, without any other reasons behind it— and that has now warped into situations like this one with Musk.

hard to know what peasants actually thought about stuff but there must be feudal and early modern analogues to this phenomenon especially with those stans who are also his employees

the charismatic protofascist strongmen of the 1800s feel like a precursor except they sometimes actually did stuff for their supporters

of course he's neither charismatic nor strong but maybe being a weird awkward nerd promising sci fi shit is the new being a tough talking moustache guy covered in fake medals

“That we have made a hero of Howard Hughes tells us something interesting about ourselves, something only dimly remembered, tells us that the secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake (Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power), but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one’s own rules.”

it’s true that’s a poor wikipedia article

what i meant was the mentality that some people are just born to power and riches, and that’s fine, we have nothing, and that’s also fine, in fact it’s the only way it can be, it’s how the world is ordered and to argue for a better way is to in some sense go against the will of god and nature, so let us simply enjoy what pleasures we can in this life and recognise the beauty and greatness of our betters when they accomplish their public feats

some people have for sure always venerated the rich and powerful, in rome emperors were both the richest and powerfulest guys and when they werent busy assassinating them many considered them to be demi gods

as to why musk got particularly famous, and his fame does well predate becoming "the richest person in the world" which carries its own fame, i think it was due to a well executed plan to become famous

alien vs predater

should add was brilliant marketing for tesla which prob wouldnt have survived or flourished without it, but then musk started believing his own hype which is a well known thing you shouldnt do

Monotheism lends itself even more to veneration of the powerful than polytheism did, because the monotheistic god is all-powerful and infallible, where the Greco-Roman deities were fickle and sometimes even wrong. Kings and caliphs exploited this obviously via divine rights and all that, but in the post-monarchical parts of the Abrahamic world we've still allowed some sense of that to persist, that the wealthy and powerful must have divine favor, as evidenced by their wealth and power. If you believe in a hierarchical monotheistic deity, it's easy to assume the hierarchies established in the earthly realms reflect God's wishes. That this actually goes against some pretty explicit teachings of Christ per the gospels — which were anti-establishment and anti-wealth-and-power - is less of a problem than it seems like it should be, because obv most people don't really follow Jesus as a philosopher, just as a guarantor of their own ticket to heaven.

There’s also the bootstraps ideology that is pounded into peoples’ brains from the moment they take their first breaths in this country.

Yep, which also has a strong Protestant flavor. Really, the Prosperity Gospel movement just kind of takes that twining of capital and theology to a logical end.

Anyway, Elon is now encouraging coups. Basically just turning Twitter into Parler.

And once again, Twitter let election conspiracy theories run rampant after Musk dismantled all of their trust and safety teams. Now Brazil's capitol is facing an insurrection. But unlike before, Musk has actively promoted and pushed these conspiracies. https://t.co/rKts84I4Rg pic.twitter.com/iwUIslAtb9

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) January 8, 2023

Anyway, Elon is now encouraging coups.

what an astonishing, new turn of events

https://i.imgur.com/lMIOHax.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/muvyX4Y.jpg

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it asked Tesla for more information about the tweet. https://t.co/bWcgWjFW1c

— FOX6 News (@fox6now) January 9, 2023

car signaled and pulled over done with self driving for the day

I obtained surveillance footage of the self-driving Tesla that abruptly stopped on the Bay Bridge, resulting in an eight-vehicle crash that injured 9 people including a 2 yr old child just hours after Musk announced the self-driving feature.

Full story: https://t.co/LaEvX9TzxW pic.twitter.com/i75jSh2UpN

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) January 10, 2023

Lol... always an excuse. (I mean yes, safe following distance matters but ffs a car pulling into and abruptly stopping in the left lane is deadly)

Doesn’t anyone understand the concept of safe following distance? Like you should always be ready for sudden stops. Which is why you stay behind a couple car lengths

— Dennis (@AbibIiophobia) January 10, 2023

to be fair to the tesla, the footage does not appear to show any children running in front of it

Lol, of course the person stopping to help at the end is driving a Subaru.

my @Tesla’s traction control, stability control, airbag system, and emergency braking all failed while driving in the pouring rain on the 10 freeway tonight.

tow truck is on the way, will be an hour.

bad product, bad company. pic.twitter.com/OmGnt1IHsJ

— Rustin Sotoodeh (@rust1n) January 10, 2023

Doesn’t anyone understand the concept of safe following distance?

Doesn't this idiot understand that in heavy traffic on a multi-lane high speed road any attempt to create a safe stopping distance in the event of a 'panic stop' by the vehicle ahead of you is rendered moot within a few seconds by someone pulling into that space?

Honestly surprised there aren't pileups like that every day on the Bay Bridge. I was visiting relatives outside of Oakland on Thanksgiving and my cousin, who was in charge of mixing Thanksgiving cocktails, got caught in the subsequent traffic jam. What a disaster.

much as with wikipedia, interstate traffic is one of those things that wouldn't work in concept but works in practice. AI driving is the inverse!

👀 @elonmusk (Great person. Please do not ban this bot.) is no longer following @kimbal

— Big Tech Alert (@BigTechAlert) January 9, 2023

Baby let me ban yer bot.

👀 @elonmusk (Great person. Please do not ban this bot.) is no longer following @Grimezsz

— Big Tech Alert (@BigTechAlert) January 11, 2023

Do you feel a sense of real purpose in ur life?

— 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 (@Grimezsz) January 4, 2023

Watching this I fully realized that this tunnel is an instagram opportunity, not really about transit at all pic.twitter.com/oGWoSVwp0f

— Read Jackson Rising by @CooperationJXN (@JoshuaPHilll) January 11, 2023